🚀 go-pugleaf

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

<snip>
>In many ways, the limitations of the older technologies inspired
>developers to new heights. Unfortunately, a lot of indie developers
>just assume that if they utilize retro-graphics, they will recapture
>that same magic without understanding it was more than just using
>320x240 art that made those games great. 

What they forget was that those games in their day weren't minimalist
retro games, they were the State of the Art, often pushing the limits of
what was possible.  It just wasn't possible to do better graphics back
then so they had to push in other areas.

>In some ways I regret the amazing advances in graphics over the past
>twenty years; the focus on pixel-density, huge numbers of polygons,
>high-res textures, real-time lighting, etc. seemed like such a
>distraction from proper artistry, world-building and focus on
>gameplay. It's only in the last four or five years - as GPU tech
>finally seems to be plateauing - that developers are starting to focus
>on these basics again rather than chasing framerates and the latest
>technical buzzwords. 

While it had it's issues from the generated terrain, Daggerfall had so
many other things that games like Skyrim are sorely lacking.

Skyrim *looked* much better, but in pretty much every other regard is so
much less.
Gimped item creator
No spell creator
Default spells a *tiny* amount on the previous games - seriously,
freezing northern waters and they don't have a water walking spell
available?
No stats/skill like in the earlier games
No letters of credit but back to the old "gold weighs nothing" nonsense
Ownership of a house or two IF and only if you'd done favors for the
locals vs there's houses for sale that you can buy from the bank if you
have the cash.
No ship ownership despite being on the coast.
And of course Skyrim also had a tiny map and the bane of all such small
map games, invisible walls to stop you going out.
Multiple ways of doing things (thieves pick locks, mages use a spell and
warrior types smash open locks and doors) vs Skyrim's "everybody knows
how to pick locks" and chests and doors are utterly immune to damage.


Now if someone could come up with some better procedural generation
algorithms to generate a _country_ sized county that wasn't flat nor
boring, then maybe we could get back to having all those other features
back and good graphics too.

Instead they're probably going to keep focusing on graphics and trying
to make decent VR/3D stuff while the games get as shallow as a puddle.

And they'll sell since the current generation of gamers never
experienced the oceans of depth older games had and are used to puddles.

They can't miss what they've never had and they've been trained to
expect games they can rush through and never play again (those that even
play at all instead of watching someone else play via a video. I really
don't understand the attraction in that.)

They don't expect depth or replay value or a radically different
experience with a different class, they expect everything to be balanced
and equal because they also expect it to be online and have pvp and thus
all classes have to be equal.

With them being the majority of gamers (if not now, they will be as
older gamers stop playing and/or die off) there's not much incentive for
the beancounters to focus on anything but shallow generic utterly
forgettable RPGs and online arenas, since their audience expects that
and will buy it as long as the graphics are amazing and they're told
it's trendy via some social media campaign.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr